The iPhone and similar mobile devices have changed our lives with their apps. For the better: we can now see the progress of a house-moving storm headed in our direction. For the worse: we can now annoy the hell out of of movie theater patrons by checking on the progress of a house-moving storm headed in our direction every thirty seconds during Harry Potter.
But SlantedScience is here to help. Our new series will introduce you to the ways in which iPhone apps can assist you in living a healthy life.
If you want to be a dick and use them in a movie theater, that’s entirely up to you.
Tattoos: they’re for criminals, bikers, and drunk girls on spring break, right?
Wrong.
Smartphones: they’re for emergencies, playing Angry Birds and viewing porn without your wife seeing the history on the home computer, right?
Wrong.
See, today we bring you news of how these two disparate entities are about to converge in an amazing way. It’s all down to a combination of research by Heather Clark at Northeastern University (published in the journal Integrative Biology), and the emergent camera technology that is being linked with the iPhone 5.
Clark and her colleagues injected a collection of tiny sensors (100 nanometers in diameter), suspended into an oil solution, under the skin of mice, just like a traditional tattoo. These sensors are capable of binding several substrates, including glucose and sodium. Binding causes the sensor to fluoresce, and this increased fluorescence can be detected by lab equipment (in the case of the experimental mice) or, hopefully, by an iPhone camera. Here’s the kind of image the scientists got from their experiments: a mouse implanted with sensors which have been activated:
See the row of red/yellow dots down its spine? Those are areas where the sensors tattoos have been made.
Applications are obvious: diabetics could be able to monitor glucose levels, and athletes could monitor their blood electrolyte concentrations, simply by taking a photograph of their forearm.
As profitable as these approaches may be, if the boffins are listening could you please also make a test for blood alcohol levels? In a rare serious moment, we sure would appreciate anything which could help stop dicks driving while drunk.
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This is a horror movie come true — one step more towards the creation of cyborgs. As usual, a nasty question crossed my twisted mind: how can the boffins be sure the nano-sensors will stay put (mind they’re just modified molecules to be inserted under the skin that are supposed to enter into chemical reactions, not an inert element ingrained into the skin, as with tattoos) and not get into the bloodstream and start wandering around the body so that next time you have to test, say, blood alcohol levels you’ll have to take a picture of your buttocks, scrunched scrotum or glans penis in public, not to mention even worse scenario — they get lost somewhere inside you body?
On a serious note, the element used is almost certainly toxic (although they’ll tell you there’s no scientific evidence of that … yet), immune system could simply reject them, causing allergic reactions, or they could start multiplying inside the body, etc.
Mark my words, it’ll prove to be another run-out-of-ideas-how-to-justify-their-salaries scientists’ sham … at best.